Form Factor

The basic common needs of all cubesats–such as solar cells, antennas, cooling, and avionics–are far more suited to a planar construction style than a cube. These subsystems benefit from large surface area, but not volume. For example, a single face of a 1U cubesat, as might be used in a typical university mission, offers only around 2W of power–less than a smartphone browsing the web. Even achieving this limited power budget requires the use of very expensive space-specific solar cells.

We propose a new form factor, in which the volume of a traditional spec-compliant 6U cubesat dispenser is divided into five thin slices, instead of cubes. Each slice is equivalent in volume to a 1.2U traditional cubesat, but is flat instead of cubic, approximately 366 x 226 x 22mm. If a different volume is required for a specific payload, the stacking interface can be adjusted to customize the thickness of each slice individually, so long as the total stack thickness adds up to approximately 110mm.

Layout comparison between traditional 1U cubesats and a stack of “slices”, in a 6U container.